AirAsia India Coming By 4th Quarter

AirAsia is launching an Indian unit by the years end in cooperation with the Indian conglomerate Tata. This joint venture was announced in India yesterday.

There are already quite a few “different AirAsia’s flying around in Asia. There is AirAsia (AK), Thai AirAsia, (FD), Indonesia AirAsia (QZ), AirAsia X (D7), Philippines AirAsia (PQ) and the newest entrant the AirAsia Japan (JW).

The Indian airline sector had been closed for foreign ownership, but these rules were recently relaxed. Now, foreign entity can own up to 49% of the airline. This joint venture will see AirAsia to own 49% of the new airline. The rest is is owned by Tata and Telestra. Tata used to own an airline in India that was nationalized after the second world war and became Air India.

Conclusion

The entry of AirAsia is always a win for the consumers by lowering the fares in the market. I do fly them occasionally here in Asia, but for the most part they keep the fares of the full service national carriers in check.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Nasrun Ismail

AirAsia is not always the cheapest, even sometimes premium airlines such as Vietnam Airlines and Malaysia Airlines are cheaper then AirAsia. Firefly (community airlines in Malaysia) also can be even cheaper than AirAsia especially route to Kota Bharu (KBR), Singapore (SIN) and Langkawi (LGK) with complimentary 20kg baggage and refreshment. Now we (Malaysian) have Malindo Airways to compete with AirAsia.